The Dog Who Led Me Back to My Italian Roots

“Sometimes, the smallest clue can lead us all the way back to where our family story began.”

Ever since I was a boy—and that was a very long time ago—I have been fascinated by my family’s history. It was the 1950s, and I was still a child, already wondering who my ancestors had been, how they had lived, what they had done for a living, where they had come from, why they had left Italy, and how they had eventually made their way to Brazil.
I knew I came from an Italian family. My surname told me that much, as did a few fragments of family history passed down by older relatives. But knowing that your ancestors came from Italy is one thing. Discovering the exact town or village they called home is something else entirely. I wanted to find that place on a map. I wanted to know the community they had belonged to, the region that had shaped their lives, and the story of the people who had crossed an ocean, leaving so much behind.
For years, I searched for answers on my own. I questioned older relatives, gathered whatever memories I could, and followed every lead I could find. In my hometown, several families shared my surname. I knew some were related to me, but I could not establish a connection with others. The one thing I wanted most, however, remained beyond my reach: a definite link to the place in Italy from which my family had come.
I married and raised a family, and my desire to discover my roots only grew stronger. I wanted to be able to tell my children more than that their ancestors were Italian. I wanted to give them a place, a history, and a story they could recognize as their own.
Then, in an era before the internet, an unexpected turn of events set everything in motion.
I had bought a house with a large yard and wanted a dog to help protect the property. To learn more about the different breeds, I borrowed an illustrated book about dogs from a couple of friends. After studying the possibilities, I settled on a Rottweiler.
My next step was to find a reputable breeder. I contacted the Kennel Club and asked for a recommendation. They directed me to one of the best-known breeders in the region, a man who was also involved in horse breeding and rural pursuits.
I asked for the owner's name.
When I heard his surname, I was taken aback. It was the same as mine.
Then came an even greater surprise. The kennel owner was my cousin, the son of my father's older brother. We had known each other as children, but many years had passed since we had last seen one another. He had not even known that I was living in that part of the region.
I went to visit him.
At the kennel, a Rottweiler mother was caring for seven puppies, all a little over a month old. My cousin let me choose one, and I picked the puppy I wanted. We agreed that I would bring him home when he turned two months old.
The puppy was already registered with the Kennel Club and had been given a name: Danke.
I had no idea then how deeply that little dog would become connected to my family’s story.
Reconnecting with my cousin brought us back to a subject that had occupied my thoughts for years: our family’s origins. He was a few years older than I was, yet he knew little more than I did about our Italian ancestors. His father, my uncle, used to say that our grandfather and great-grandfather, who had come from Italy, had never been inclined to talk about the past.
During one of our conversations, my cousin suddenly remembered something he had discovered years earlier.
After our grandfather died, his father had inherited some of his books. Inside one of them, my cousin found a small, yellowed scrap of paper with a single word written in pencil.
Pederobba.
For me, that word was potentially the first concrete clue I had found in years of searching. It was no longer merely a family memory or a vague reference to Italy. It was a name I could investigate.
There was just one problem. In the early 1980s, the internet did not exist. There were no search engines, online genealogy databases, or digital maps to consult. A name written on an old piece of paper could open a door, but finding that door was another matter altogether.
I was an amateur radio operator and regularly made contacts with people in different parts of the world. Amateur radio brought with it an interest in geography, and I often received QSL cards—the postcards radio operators exchange to confirm their contacts. Some came with photographs, postcards, or maps showing the cities and regions where the other operators lived.
It was through an Italian friend I had met through amateur radio that my search finally began to move forward.
He sent me a map of the Province of Treviso, along with a postcard of the city of Treviso distributed by the local newspaper Tribuna di Treviso. I studied the map carefully until I found the name I had been searching for.
Pederobba.
The town was in the Province of Treviso, close to the border with the Province of Belluno.
For the first time, the word written in pencil inside my grandfather’s old book had a place on a map. After years of wondering, I finally knew where to begin looking.
I still did not know whether Pederobba was truly the homeland of my ancestors, but now I had a lead worth pursuing.
I decided to write to the editor of Tribuna di Treviso. My Italian was extremely limited, so I relied on a small Portuguese-Italian dictionary to put my thoughts into words. I explained who I was, where I lived, that I was trying to trace my family’s origins, and that I believed my ancestors might have come from the Province of Treviso.
Then I asked a simple question: would it be possible to find out whether any readers or subscribers shared my surname?
I was not looking for fame or recognition. I simply wanted to find my roots.
A little over a month later, something happened that I have never forgotten.
Almost at the same time, six letters arrived from Italy, all connected to my surname. The editor had been moved by my story and by the letter I had managed to write in my rudimentary Italian. He decided to publish it in a Sunday edition of the newspaper, which circulated throughout the province.
Of the six people who wrote to me, two turned out to be distant relatives.
A couple from Pederobba offered to help me with my research. They contacted other people, spoke with local acquaintances, and eventually reached a local historian whose remarkable knowledge of the town and its families had made him something of a living archive of Pederobba.
At last, my search had become more than a solitary effort to decipher a name. People in the very place I hoped to find were helping me piece together my family’s past.
I kept up a regular correspondence with them, and the following year I traveled to Italy.
I still did not speak Italian fluently. I was traveling with a tour group that would be staying about an hour and a half by car from Pederobba, and I had only one day available to meet the people who had helped me. To make the visit possible, I gave up a scheduled excursion to the Sanctuary of Saint Anthony in Padua.
That morning, the couple came to pick me up at the hotel.
They took me to their home, where a large lunch with several members of their family awaited me. Later that afternoon, they showed me Pederobba and the places connected with our family’s history.
The encounter meant far more than a visit to an unfamiliar town. For the first time, I was standing on the land that had occupied my thoughts for so many years. Until then, Pederobba had existed for me as little more than a name, a question, and a possibility. Now it was a real place, and I was there.
In the years that followed, I studied Italian and returned to Italy many times. Because there was not enough lodging in Pederobba, I began staying in the neighboring municipality of Alano di Piave. What I did not yet know was that Alano di Piave was also the birthplace of my great-great-grandfather.
With each journey, I uncovered more pieces of the puzzle. Documents, letters, conversations, and further research gradually helped me reconstruct the history of my family and bring distant generations into clearer focus.
That was how a single word, written in pencil on a scrap of yellowed paper inside an old book, became much more than a clue. Pederobba became a place I knew, a point of reference for my family’s history, and, above all, a part of my own life.
More than forty years have passed since those events. Danke did not live a long life, but he was a wonderful friend and a faithful companion. Without my knowing it when I chose him, he had become part of one of the most meaningful discoveries of my life: the search for my family’s Italian roots.
And there is one detail I have never forgotten. Danke’s name had been chosen before I met my cousin again, before I learned about the old note, and before Pederobba appeared on my map. In German, Danke means “thank you.”
Perhaps it was nothing more than a coincidence. There is no way to know. But after everything that followed, the word came to mean something to me that the passing years have never erased.
When I think of that dog, of the companionship he gave me, and of the remarkable chain of events that began around the time I chose him, I find myself returning to the same simple word.
Danke. Thank you.

“If you are trying to discover where your Italian ancestors came from, this guide to tracing your family’s Italian origins may help you begin your own search.” 

Author’s Note
This is a true story from my own family. The events described took place more than four decades ago, when genealogical research depended on letters, maps, newspapers, original documents, personal contacts, and a great deal of patience. There were no online databases or search engines to provide immediate answers. For more than three decades, I have also worked closely with families of Italian descent as they searched for their own origins. Over the years, I have learned that a genealogical journey can begin with something that appears insignificant: a surname, an old photograph, a birth or marriage certificate, a memory passed down by a relative—or, as happened in my case, a small note written in pencil and tucked inside an old book. The images accompanying this article are illustrative and were generated using artificial intelligence. They are not authentic photographs of the people or events described. The story itself is true. It recounts how I began tracing my family’s roots to Pederobba, in the Province of Treviso, Italy, and how an unexpected reunion with a cousin and a dog named Danke helped set that journey in motion.

Dr. Luiz Carlos B. Piazzetta
Author and researcher of Italian immigration and family history